Viewing the Past Through Someone Else’s Eyes

While I’ve met many people who have had symptoms of mood or anxiety disorders appear in their 30’s or 40’s or 50’s and can only imagine how jarring the result must have been, I find myself at the other end of the spectrum.

Many of my childhood memories involve big emotional explosions (good and bad) and frankly, the anxiety I feel today spans back to as far back as I can remember.

Though my emotional journey has been somewhat complicated, it seemed to me (as an adult) that my experiences with anxiety haven’t been. The anxiety is something that has always been there, but for a long time I didn’t see it. The feelings I had were typical for me (for lack of a better word), I really didn’t know anything different.

I think the difficulty in this route (vs the sudden, immediate cresting of symptoms later in life) is that the realizations I have had about the depth of my anxiety have happened slowly over time. There was no one moment where everything became clear, it has been more like a trail of discoveries.

Discovering, for example, that I have been having panic attacks since I was in 5th grade and I didn’t know it (because it was something that just became part of my life).

Or discovering that my unruly digestive tract and IBS is related to the anxiety I have always experienced.

This time, a few weeks ago, I was cleaning up some papers before moving and found a note written to me by my boyfriend my sophomore year in high school. The note was one of distress, and he said I was acting completely different at school than I did when we were hanging out otherwise. Apparently in the setting of school, I could hardly speak to him, let alone do things like typical teenager hand-holding in public.

Though I don’t remember any of this taking place, I admit I was a little shocked when I read about it. What I do remember was that this boy’s interest in me finally detached the creepy tentacles of the teacher who had been sexually harassing me for the last two years, and for that I felt an incredible weight lifted off my shoulders.

Apparently even without that weight, my social anxiety was practically paralyzing. I admit, I don’t remember feeling terribly anxious about school, but based on that letter (and others) everything I did and felt was within the realm of what I already knew: a world based on anxiety.

It isn’t very often I find things like this that can lend such a different perspective on the past, but when I do I am thankful they can give a little insight about things that took place (and the status of my mental health at the time).